Financing and expectation management

With the 4.7 billion euros that Catalonia is entitled to according to the agreement between Sánchez and Junqueras, Jordi Pujol would have taken the textbook "grab the money and run" approach. Pujol and most of the presidents who succeeded him would have done the same. And since the agreement also includes respect for the principle of ordinality and the end of advance payments, it wouldn't be a matter of wearing leather jackets.

Nothing new under the sun: a Catalan party holds one of the keys to Spanish and Catalan governance and is negotiating improved funding for the Generalitat. And since the Generalitat shares a common funding system, the agreement the Catalan party negotiates, thanks to its arithmetic leverage, ends up benefiting the other regions. That's why, when it became clear that the agreement wouldn't reach the heights of the Basque Country's special tax arrangements, the creativity of the department of euphemistic narratives invented the "generalizable singular model."

The problem is that we came with higher expectations. First came the whole loaf of bread, which couldn't be. Just below independence lies the Economic Agreement, which represents independence in legislation, tax collection, and settlement. And without any solidarity quota with Spain. This is what the Basque Country and Navarre have. We're not there. Nor are we in the Tax Agency, which was initially supposed to collect personal income tax this year, 2026, but won't start until 2028. We are, therefore, in an agreement that represents a clear improvement but falls far short of the letter and the tune (fiscal sovereignty) with which Esquerra presented it in 2023.

Nothing new, either. Just as the Celtiberian reaction of the Spanish and very Spanish people is nothing new, who, when Aznar negotiated his investiture in 1996 with CiU in exchange for 30% of personal income tax, thought it was fine.